Cross-talk among socket contacts has become a significant barrier for high speed signal rate in socket assemblies. To control cross-talk, prior art socket assemblies have been designed which sacrifice available socket contact positions by using them for ground shielding purposes. In some server socket applications, for example, it may be necessary to use as many one third of the socket contact population as ground-shielding. Using so many ground-contacts within a socket is not only costly, but it takes up an increasing amount of circuit board real-estate in an already tightly constrained platform.